I seem to have the baking bug. I have many cookbooks as you might imagine, as someone being interested in food and having a family to feed, most are flicked through a couple of times, a mental note of who does what best for reference, a few of the recipes are tried and then they are placed on the bookcase to be referred back to as and when. At the weekend I picked up this simple book, ‘Easy Baking by Linda Collister’ and I haven’t been able to put it back down. When its says Easy the recipes are very easy and most of the recipes have a lovely big photograph of the finished item which appeals to my inner child.

The day before yesterdays bread was taken from there and yesterday I made biscuits for the Girls at Knitting. These are Demerara Shortbread…

and these are Almond Biscotti. They seemed to like them.

And then late last night, I was thinking about bread, the boys had complained that even though I had made them lovely savoury rolls, which are nearly all gone, they have nothing to put there Nutella on. A memory surfaced about Seed Cake and the lovely smell of caraway seeds. When the boys were young and I was walking them past that sweetie shop twice a day, they needed a quick pit stop when they got home. I didn’t want to laden them down with too many fats and sugars but they still needed something more than an apple, I became obsessive about seed cake, baking it constantly for months on end. My favourite recipe at that time was Mary Fords Orange Seed Cake, I just loved the smell of the orange and caraways seeds mingling, it was truly a hypnotic experience. I eventually moved on to other recipes, but the smell of caraway seeds still haunts me in a rather beautiful way.

Then, the Poppy seed bread that looks so inviting in Linda Collisters Easy Baking book became intermingled with my memory of caraway seeds, along with the need for the boys to have a bread suitable for Nutella spreading and so this idea was born. Linda’s poppy seeds were swapped for caraway seeds (although only one and a half tablespoons, not the full forty grams, that would have overpowered things) , the rest of the recipe is the same.